Its been too long...but our much loved competition and blog is back for good!

Why has it taken you so long?Previously we had a weekly competition and the problem was that we weren't receiving enough entries. We were a little bit restricted in our choice of winning images so decided to give the site a break, until we figured out how we were going to move it forward.

To address this issue we're going to remove the time limit on entries. We want to grow this competition and spread the word, but until we reach that point we're not going to put a deadline on when the results will be published. Instead we'll be making a call for entires for each round of the competition. The round might last a couple of weeks or a couple of months.

We're now starting to actively advertise and promote the website and hope you will help share the competition galleries too. This will generate more interest and hopefully give us more entries to judge, with a quicker turnover of rounds.

You re-designed the site.Yes it needed a refresh. We want the winners and commended entries to take centre stage. The latest round of results will show on the homepage and previous rounds can be found easily too. We hope you like the new design!

What are you going to do to get more entries?We've already built a bit of a following, but we're pushing to increase awareness with our customer base and in the media! We'll be doing some print advertising and dedicating more space on our Point101 newsletter and all our social channels. We hope you will spread the love too by following us and sharing the competition galleries.

When does the next round of the competition start?Its already open! Just visit our call for entries page which will always include the latest information on how you can enter.

Its been a long wait for this next round of results. I promise we haven't been lazy, we just haven't had enough entries to be able to judge it until now! I hope that people who have had entries highly commended but haven't won will try again each week as we love the images we're featuring in the galleries.

Please do let us know if you're having any exhibitions by the way as we're happy to feature them on the site if they are relevant.

This time around we have had a mix of urban scenes, portraits and moody landscapes sent to us. We've had a notable entry from Leon Lester entitled "Integration". A digitised version of a 2008 work of acrylic on canvas. We love textures and this work really caught our attention, it has a depth and mesmeric feel to it. My biscuit ended up disintegrating in my cup of coffee after staring at it too long...

Integration by Leon Lester

You can see more of Leon's work on his website here. Moving on to other entries, the majority were photographic and submissions of note include a portrait by Alexis Calhoun:

Alexis Calhoun

and a really fun colourful image that gives us a nostalgia of fair ground moments by Adam Regan:

Adam ReganThe winner? A perfectly timed shot that I know from experience is really difficult to get right.

Eddie Think

The photographer Eddie Think used an external flash to get this just right. Here is a description in his own words of how he did it:

"The photo is off a spring evening, when my friend Robbin and I went over to the local skatepark in Utrecht, the Netherlands. We shot this photo in about 10 tries with an external flash to make him "pop" out of the background a lot more."

Printed A3 on Fotospeed Matt paper with archival inksClose up on Point101's Matt paper stockYou can see more of Eddie's work here: tagsters.nl and tagstersmagazine.com. And of course the rest of the commended entries and higher resolution photos of all images featured in this post are in the week 7 gallery here. Get those entries in fast for week 8 so we don't need to wait too long for our next round up!

Thanks again for all that entered their image over the last few weeks. A great selection of entries and some really technically sound images are now on display in week 6 of the competition gallery. It was really difficult to choose a winner; notably a highly commended entry from Pat Burns with this graphical photograph entitled "Taj with Crowds" showing the jet black silhouettes of the tourists and the subtle detail in the background of the Taj Mahal - beautiful shot:

by Pat Burns

The winning image however is by Tim Martin. I really loved this image because of the complexity of it. The detail of the reflections in the tower, the ships in the distance. The golden / sepia colours of the image give it a certain starkness and grittyness and the on-lookers standing by the edge of the glass watching the world elapse.

by Tim Martin

Here is a description of the photo from Tim Martin:

"I took this picture in Hong Kong from the 100th floor of the International Commerce Center. The skies in the country are always dramatic, and the clouds cover the 100th floor of this building often, especially during stormy weather. After taking pictures from every angle I could find there, this one came out the best because of the reflections and clouds, really showing what I feel like is a good representation of Hong Kong."